Articles by: Tien Nguyen

Videogram: How a Vox Video Explains the Science behind the First Photo of a Black Hole

Videogram: How a Vox Video Explains the Science behind the First Photo of a Black Hole

Among the various forms of science storytelling online, video has the most moving parts. To convey a story through writing, sound, and visuals, video creators need to ensure that each aspect plays well with the others. If they don’t, they risk confusing viewers, or perhaps worse, boring them. Here, Vox video producer Joss Fong tells us how she expertly achieved this balance in Vox‘s video about how scientists took the first photo of a black hole.

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by · January 7, 2020 · 0 comments
El primer crítico eres tú: cómo editar tu propio trabajo

El primer crítico eres tú: cómo editar tu propio trabajo

Conforme se reduce el presupuesto de los medios periodísticos tradicionales y los editores tienen que desempeñar muchas tareas, a los escritores se les pide que asuman un papel más grande al darle forma a sus propias historias. Ya sea que se tenga al mejor editor del mundo o que no se tenga a ninguno, es necesario editarse a sí mismo para lograr la mejor historia posible.

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by · March 18, 2019 · 2 comments
Erica Klarreich

Erica Klarreich Profiles an Award-Winning Mathematician

Erica Klarreich’s August 2014 Quanta magazine article “A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces” describes the career arc of Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani, casting the mathematician—winner of the 2014 Fields Medal, often described as mathematics’ Nobel Prize—as a fearless and accomplished scholar. Here, Klarreich tells the story behind her story, including the decision to bury the information that Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields Medal.

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by · September 30, 2014 · 4 comments
Four Editors Give Tips on Writing Headlines. You Won’t Believe What Happens Next.

Four Editors Give Tips on Writing Headlines. You Won’t Believe What Happens Next.

Good headlines achieve balance. They pique the reader’s interest without demanding it, they allude to the story without giving it away, and they give specific details without being technical. On top of that, good headlines should also be “funny, surprising, clear or crisp,” says Laura Helmuth, the science and health editor at Slate.

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by · September 9, 2014 · 2 comments
Smooth Scriptwriting

Smooth Scriptwriting

Audio and video provide alternate ways of crafting compelling narratives, but writing for multimedia outlets involves a different set of skills than writing for print. Here, science journalists and producers share their script-writing process—from choosing a medium, to piecing the story together, to clarifying interviews in post-production. And they highlight common pitfalls that writers new to multimedia should watch out for.

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by · August 12, 2014 · 3 comments
John Timmer

A Day in the Life of John Timmer

John Timmer is the science editor of Ars Technica and teaches journalism, communications, and scientific writing at Stony Brook University and Weill Cornell Medical College.

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by · July 29, 2014 · 0 comments
Tackling the Physical Sciences

Tackling the Physical Sciences

  Imagine that you are a salesperson tasked with selling a special product. Most people know very little about the product, and many have had a bad experience with similar items. People can’t see what […]

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by · July 15, 2014 · 0 comments
The First Critic Is You: Editing Your Own Work

The First Critic Is You: Editing Your Own Work

      Self-editing is a selfless endeavor. You cut, replace, rearrange, and endlessly reread—all for the reader’s benefit. “Journalism is all about having a sense of empathy with your audience,” says Dan Fagin, director […]

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by · June 24, 2014 · 2 comments

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